your heart is grieving
by potahtopotato
Summary: George and Percy commiserate at Fred's funeral and find that they might have more in common than they thought. In case this can be somehow misinterpreted: NOT WEASLEYCEST.


George watches the rain. It's the disgusting almost-mist-but-not-quite sort, the type of rain that makes George feel like he'll never be warm again. It matches his mood perfectly, as though controlled by an invisible, all-powerful puppet master in an effort to better convey how miserable he is.

George Weasley is sitting on a damp log as his twin brother's funeral is conducted a few hundred feet away, on the other side of the hill, unable to master the will to do even a simple warming charm. He wonders how he would have reacted if someone had told him at age fifteen that this was his fate, and then decides that he would rather not know.

On the other hand, he thinks, better here than there. George had lasted less than half an hour before sneaking away so that he could be depressed in peace without being forced to endure the same exchange with various acquaintances again and again.

"Cold weather, eh?" someone would ask him, an aunt or uncle or friend of a friend—they all blended together after a while—and George would nod, and the aunt or uncle or friend of a friend would wait a moment to see if he'd say something interesting; when he didn't, they would turn away and start a conversation with the person next to them.

George gets that a lot these days, people eager to talk to him but unsure where to proceed once they've moved past a basic greeting. They settle, mostly for saying "sorry".

George thinks he's heard that word more in the last few days than ever in his entire life. He's not sure why people keep apologizing to him; they don't bother to specify what for—for not fighting? for running away? for putting their faith in a seventeen year old and cowering as schoolchildren fought in a war?—but they never say.

"I'm sorry," as if George cares what they think. But he understands that they don't know what else to say, so he nods and shrugs and waits for them to go away.

There's a noise behind him, and George turns his head to see Percy, whose impeccably neat suit looks out of place against the background of mud that surrounds him.

"Hello," Percy says, and George nods. Percy walks over, mutters a drying charm, and sits on the log next to George with an expression of acute distaste.

"Terrible weather we're having," Percy says, and George wonders what, exactly, his older brother is playing at. Percy doesn't seem to know either, because he doesn't say anything for a minute or so, then clears his throat.

"Look here, I need to make a—confession, of sorts."

George raises an eyebrow, trying to muster some curiosity. He feels a drop of rainwater sliding down his brow, and he wipes it off. "Oh?"

"Yes. I need to tell someone, and you seem like the right choice. You hate me, of course, but more so than most other people I know, so telling you this could hardly cause you to regard me in an even more negative way than you already do. "

Percy says this matter-of-factly and without a trace of self-pity, and George is almost impressed despite himself.

"I don't miss him," Percy says. When George fails to react, he sighs and continues. "He was my brother, George, and I don't miss him."

"So?"

"So? Well, everyone's going around acting as though he were some sort of martyr. Dad's been going on about how he never should have let him fight, as if he could have actually stopped him, Mum's saying that oh, he was so _brilliant_ and whyever would she be angry with him over something as silly as OWLs, they're all _crying_ all the time, and I think I'm going insane.

"They're standing up there right now, talking about how Fred was brilliant and funny and kind and loyal and perfect, and none of it is true!"

George stares at him; Percy bites the inside of his cheek.

"What I mean is that either there's something wrong with me, or with everyone else, because the Fred I remember is not the Fred that everyone else seems to."

"And you knew him better than anyone else, obviously."

"No, I didn't know him best, but I certainly knew him well enough to know that he wasn't—what they're saying he was.

"He was insufferable at times, you know that? His pranks—your pranks—they weren't always funny, and he—you—were plenty cruel, and hurt a lot of people, and most of those same people are standing there right now, talking about how much of an inspiration he was, what a beacon of light in a time of darkness. And it seems just sort of—insulting, honestly.

"Because what they're making him out to be, it makes it seem like it was natural, like it was _right_ for him to die, because that was the right thing to do, for someone as perfect as he was. The whole point is that he had the choice, that he didn't always make the right decisions, but he did when it came to what's important, and saying that he was all great and of course he'd be willing to die for the cause—that's just wrong.

"What's happening out there—what's been happening for the past three weeks? It's a slaughterhouse. They're slaughtering Fred's memory, trying to change it so he'll fit in with their idea of what he should have been like, and you know I never liked either of you much, but this is ridiculous."

Percy takes his glasses off and polishes them with the bottom of his shirt.

"And that's all I wanted to say. That Fred was quite a bit of a git, but it was part of who he was, obviously, and when they're calling him an angel and an inspiration and whatnot that's worse than pissing on his grave. And he—I don't, you know, miss him per se, but I don't think that's a good reason to disrespect someone like that. So."

He looks at George, his expression both expectant and apprehensive.

George tries to digest this. Percy's not wrong, exactly, even if he isn't right. There's a reason why George isn't standing with the rest of his family at the moment, and the reason consists mostly of the fact that if he hears another former classmate who once threatened to get every Weasley thrown out of Hogwarts call Fred "an inspiration to us all", George thinks he will scream.

"You're not wrong," George says aloud, and waits for Percy to close his mouth, which had dropped open, presumably from shock. "You're not right, but—but you're not wrong."

"Oh." Percy blinks. "I actually thought that you'd defend him, and then we could have had a blazing row, and then Mum could have yelled at me later for making you feel worse than you already do."

"Well, maybe you don't know me as well as you think."

"Hm. Probably not."

George doesn't have anything to say to that, and neither does Percy, so nothing is said. George thinks that the silence is somehow more comfortable than it would have been a few minutes ago, but he is probably imagining it, since Percy's never shown to have an understanding of the meaning of the word "comfortable".

"You know," Percy says at last, "I've got only four brothers now. That's not too many."

 _Three and a half_ , George thinks to himself, because he hasn't felt like a full person for almost exactly three weeks.

"You should write a book," he says instead.

* * *

It works, because Percy wants his name on something other than legislation on cauldron thickness and a a headstone and George wants publicity for his newly reopened shop. Mostly, though, George wants to remember and Percy wants to understand, and so the book comes together, painful chapter by painful chapter.

They don't work together well at all, at first. Each tries to take over the entire process; they argue about everything, from the title to the font to whether this sentence should come at the beginning or the end of the paragraph. They learn to compromise eventually, though it is a hard lesson for both of them, and it ends up taking far more time than either of them expected.

Oddly enough, the book itself is excellent. It's a biography, a memoir, and a history textbook all in one, painting the life of Fred Weasley through a myriad of lenses. There are many "exclusive interviews" with war heroes, which, George and Percy suspect, is the main reason why people buy it. Not that it matters, really; the only important copy of it is the one that has a permanent seat of honor next to George's bedside table.

When George thinks that he's starting to forget—to forget what Fred's laugh sounded like, or what his favorite dessert was, or what prank they pulled together in the April of their fifth year—George likes to thumb through the novel. It helps him remember.


End file.
